August 16, 2022 • 49 mins
Two country legends, good time friends and partners in crime, Willie and Waylon shared a love of staying one step ahead of the law; except sometimes when you fight the law…the law wins.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of I Heeart Radio. Hey Elizabeth, Yes,
Zaren you know what's ridiculous? I do. I'm going to
there's a project that was It's called the Museum of
Non Visible Art. Are you familiar with this? No, I've
never seen it. It's art that doesn't exist physically. It's
(00:24):
just what's imagined by the artist, and you can buy it.
You buy a card that has a description of this
imagination thing and you hang on your wall. And then
this woman in she bought a piece called fresh Air
for ten dollars. What con Man created this? Well? I
love it. I'm going to tell you here's the description
(00:46):
of the art. A unique piece, only this one is
for sale. The art you are purchasing is like buying
an endless tank of oxygen. No matter where you are,
you always have the ability to take a breath of
the most delicious, mean smelling air that the Earth can produce.
It goes on, but I just don't want to read
it anyway. Um So do you know who the artist is?
(01:08):
Christo James Franco. Oh my god, I was close. Yeah,
that's pretty close. Christo James Franco. You know, you know, yeah,
So that's that's ridiculous. That is mad ridiculous. So basically
you're just buying a story from James Franco. Yeah, he's
not a very good storyteller though. Yeah. You ever read
Palo Alto his short story, any of the short stories? Yes,
(01:30):
I have, Yeah, because we're both from the Bay Area.
And uh, that's all I got to say about that. Well,
I've got a story for you, miss, and I'm ready. Now.
This is a story of beloved American treasure Willie Nelson.
You know him, you love him? Yes, Well, this is
about the time he visited the White House and him
being Willie, he went up and said, hey, how do
(01:50):
I get up on the roof because I got this
number I want to heat up. Now, there's also another
story I gotta tell you, because this one is a
double It's about Whitlan and Willie. I love they're together.
I love them separately, but I love when they're together.
They're amazing together. Yeah, I mean they they're way better
than salt and pepper, chocolate and vanilla everything you can name.
This impairs Whalen and Willie on top of that mountain. Now,
(02:11):
the Whalen story, I'm going to tell you is about
this time that he bought a stolen bear. A bear yeah,
who was famous for eating a duffel bag of cocaine.
I can't Okay, you're ready, totally get ready, because here
comes some ridiculous stories of drug busts of my heroes
of Outlaw Country. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about
(02:52):
absurd and outrageous capers, heights, and cons. It's all always
murder free and ridiculous. Elizabeth, do you remember the first
time that you smoked pot? No? Man, I have no
memory of it. No, well, I'll tell you this much.
Everyone is the first time, right j Willie Nelson? Can
(03:14):
you imagine or even just guess how old Willie Nelson
was when he first smoked pot? Pretty good? Guess, pretty good?
Guess much older than that, actually much older. Surprise. Well,
the year was four. And if you know when Willie
was born, that can probably help, but I don't know
that's common knowledge. Willie was He was down in Texas
at the time. He was in a bar outside of
Fort Worth. He was twenty one years old at the time,
(03:38):
and at that point he'd been a professional musician since
he was thirteen years old. Eight year professional career at
this point, so he knew how to like throw back
the bourbon with some grown ass men energy. Right now.
At that same time, he's not smoking pot. He's not
even entered into his world. He's hanging out at this bar.
He's got his buddy, musician Fred Lockwin. Fred's like, hey, well,
(03:58):
I'm gonna stap outside and go blow t Willi's like
do do what now? And he's like, yeah, you know,
I'm gonna go do gonna go blow some tea? Fred
tells him, you know, like yeah, cigarettes, you know, head cabbage,
you know, come on, man, likes him procoli. Willie's like,
I what do you owe the reeferre? You're talking about
the reefer right, and he's like yeah, yeah, man, come
on now. So Fred rolls up a joint, he lights it,
(04:19):
takes a few tokes, and it's like, Willie, you gonna
smoke with me. Willie's like hesitant. Willie Nelson hasn't have
a joint pass to him. Fred pushes it on him.
He's like, come on, man, and he says, and I
quote get high and be somebody. Well there it was, right.
He just handed Willie Nelson his future. He's like get
high and be somebody Willie Nelson like bet Son. So
(04:42):
the funny thing is for me, I don't know about
for you. Does nothing for him? He gets high, doesn't
get high, doesn't work on Willie Nelson. First time you
get the first time. I was under the impression that
for a lot of people, the first time they smoke weed,
it doesn't. I haven't heard this. He didn't. That was
not the case for me. I got blitzed, then went
right to a family function and was like, that was
a mistake. Anyways, Second time Willie Nelson smokes, boy howdy,
(05:06):
that time it works, and then he becomes Willie Nelson. Now, Elizabeth,
I promised you the story Willie Nelson getting high at
the White House. Yes, right now, I would like to
tell you this story. But first I need you to
do me a favor. Now you can't. I want you
to close your eyes. Okay, you your eyes closed. Now
you're looking at me, eyes closed, dot in you're ready. Yes,
(05:28):
I'm very disobedient today. I noticed this. Now I'm paying.
Now I'm participating. Okay, eyes closed. You're standing in the
rose Garden of the White House. The year is Jimmy
Carter is the President. Willie Nelson is on stage and
he's performing for just a small crowd. Now he finishes
playing Whiskey River. And for whatever reason, you have a headache,
(05:53):
this pounding number in my head. I gotta go rest.
So you make your excuses to leave the Rose Garden.
You step inside the White House. You find a quiet space.
You're left alone in the White House. It's the end
of the seventies, you know the beginning. Security is different
in the White House. They allow you to just meander
through the halls. You go past the Lincoln bedroom, you
look at some portraits, some bust Your head still pounding,
(06:14):
so you go and you sit down in a big,
overstuffed chair. You rest. He started drift off minutes later,
you don't know how long. All of a sudden you
come to and there's the son of the President, Chip Carter,
standing over you and he's asking you're Willie Nelson is
like what? Wait? What? And before you can answer, boom,
you hear this voice. It's Willie Nelson. He's like, you're
(06:36):
looking for me. You're like wait and you turn your head.
Willie Nelson is in the room with you and Chip
and you're like, hey, what's going on, Chip says, hey,
come on, follow me. I know the spot, Like is
he talking to me? You don't know what to do.
You still have this headache, but you're like real curious
where this is going. So you ahead and I walter Mondale. No,
not in this instance. Normally would be multi walter Mondale
(06:59):
in this and most of my paying this time not.
You're not even Gerald and Ferraro, just Elizabeth Dutton hanging
out in a chair with a headache. Willie Nelson, Chip
Carter got it. Chip Carter says, come on, follow me.
You're like, forget it, I'll do it, and you sid
to follow. Now you go on and Chip Carter leads
you and Willie downstairs, and you're like, okay, you see
(07:19):
that there's this one lane bowling alley, Like h he
tells you Nixon had to put in Nixon, big bowler
that Nixon. You're like, oh, I can see that kind
of a square. Chips like, hey, Willy, you want to
you want a bowl a game? And you're like wondering,
who's gonna ask you? But Will before you can even
be offended, will He's like, no, but you know how
we can get up on the roof and You're like,
I think I know what Willie wants, and Chip Carter
(07:41):
is like, yeah, I know the way. Follow me, so
that he takes you back upstairs and get back in
the White House from the ground level, leads you down
the hallway into like looks like a ballroom. It's a
big empty room. He leads you over by the windows,
and there is this door. The secret door does a
little thing that you don't notice. It all sudden the
door pops open. He goes, come on, follow me, lead
you up the stairway. You're following Willie. You're just right
(08:04):
behind Willie, like you know, facing his levies stairs stairs,
staring and then all of a sudden you her door
open and the light and you pop out and you're
on top of the White House. Is that when it
had solar panels? Yeah, because Jimmy Carter would have put
it on the solar panels. Look at you, I like this, yes,
Willie Nelson says, look at that view. You guys stand
(08:25):
there a moment. You gaze out of Washington, d C.
It's all lit up because it's nighttime now. Looks just beautiful. Elizabeth.
You see that the Washington Monument over there, National mall
look at the capital now, Willie. He takes a swig
at the beer he brought with him, and so he's
just strutting through the White House with a bottle of beer.
Love it. And he fishes a joint out of his pocket.
He calls it an Austin torpedo, and it's like, you
(08:47):
gotta light for this Austin torpedo. Oh my god. Then
Chip passes him a lighter. He lights it, sparks that
baby to life, takes a couple of pulls, passes it
to you. You're getting high with Willie Nelson on the
roof of them, of the most powerful person in the world.
When do I tell them I'm a d agent. Keep
that to yourself, Keep that under your cowboy. Now, when
(09:08):
Willie records the same events later on, for some reason,
I don't know why, Elizabeth, he leaves you out of
the retelling. Well, you know, we don't get your feelings.
It's Willie. He he may have just forgotten. We had
a falling out. Was it the Maui thing? It was?
I don't want to talk about the Maui inside. Okay,
we'll put it out of your mind and I'll just
give you the quote that he says his recollection of
the events, You're ready, and I quote. Sitting on top
(09:31):
of the roof of the White House in Washington, d C.
Late last night, with a beer in one hand and
a fat Austin torpedo on the other, I drifted off
into a reflective mood. My companion on the roof was
pointing out to me the sights in the layout of
how the streets run in Washington. It was a good
way to soak up a geography lesson laid back on
the roof of the White House, so I let the
weed cover me with a pleasing cloud and reflected on
(09:53):
what long strained trip it's been from smoking cedar barking
grape vine at the age of four or five, to
get and puke on your shoes drunk with my dad
Ira at the age of nine, to sitting on the
roof of the White House sharing a number in the
warm human night. I guess on the roof of the
White House is the safest place I can think to
smoke dope. Hell, it'd only been a couple of days
ago that I was busted and locked in jail in
(10:14):
the Bahamas for a handful of weed that I never
even had a chance to set on fire. Now you
may you're wondering, does the President and the Secret Service
know that you're up here getting high with Willie Nelson
and the president's son. The answer is maybe, yeah. Now,
Jimmy Carter has confirmed this story. By the way, this
actually did happen. Carter has said, and I quote when
(10:36):
Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked
pot in the White House, and he said his companion
was one of the servants at the White House. Actually
it was one of my sons. So even Carter knew
that his boy was up there getting high. Yeah. I
don't think stuff happens without people knowing, especially but Willie Nelson,
if he's in the White House, where's our honored guests,
where's my eldest son? I think you can do it
(10:57):
math anyway. So these days now pot is basically legal
in most states in America. I think, what's like twenty
eight out of the fifties something. But for most of
my teenage years pot was totally illegal. My college year,
same thing. Now these are my also my dumb criminal years.
So at any point I would I could have caught
a charge on pot and it would have ruined my life.
It's absolutely ridiculous, right, I mean, now they're comedians. A
(11:20):
lot of comedians have made this joke toom Sagura wanted.
The one that comes to minds I think is my
favorite version of this joke. Could you imagine telling a
teenager today all the things that we had to do
to buy pot from drug dealers? Right, I would drive
sixty seventy miles, I'd I'd hang out with somebody I
hung out with drug deals where they're playing with their
(11:40):
pet snake. And I mean, I'm talking like an hour,
I gotta listen to talk about Call of Duty. I
don't even play Call of Duty. I'm like, oh yeah, man,
that's the worst. Yeah, with the rumbling and so they
pull out an acoustic guitar and you have to listen
to them play for a while. Oh, oh my god.
The jam sessions. Yes, I've been there when harmonicas have
come out. I've paid the price. I bet well, you
probably didn't have to do this because I don't imagine
(12:02):
you were buying a lot of pot when you're a teenager. Yeah,
well it was bad out there was just letting you know,
you know, So if you had to guess, just take
a wild guess, how many times do you think Willie
Nelson has been arrested for pot? I know about the
tax evasion, but the pot I don't know. Like I
don't tell me, I'm not gonna tell you. I'm going
(12:23):
to run him down for you. Seventy four, Willie Nelson
gets arrested for the first time. Now there's that was
about fifty years ago, so there's very few records on that.
So what that one? Will just call us the first one? Right?
Second time he gets used in nineteen seventy seven, He's
been out on tour. He wanted to grab some rest
and relaxation, so Willy planned to go down to the Bahamas.
He decides he brings some weed with him. You know,
(12:45):
maybe the weed in the Bahamas sucks. I don't know. Anyway,
Willie gets caught weed in his jeans, gets arrested, goes
to jail. Now, Willie, is that the one he was
referring to? Good memory? Look at you? You are paying
because I don't I don't smoke weed. You're right here
just eatening fast. Well, Willie, he doesn't let this whole
pot chard stop him He's like, I'm in the Bahamas.
(13:05):
That came down to here to relax. So he has
somebody smuggling a six pack into the jail. He starts
getting drunk in jail by himself. He gets released from jail,
but by the time he gets released, he's drunk, and
so when he gets out, he immediately falls over and
hurts himself and has to go to a hospital. Then
he's in the hospital. He gets let out of the hospital,
he has to go to court. He goes to court.
He still hasn't done any rest and relaxation. Goes to court.
(13:29):
The judge tells him, look, man, we're gonna release you
on the condition that you never come back to the
Bahamas ever again. Well, he's like bet. He goes back
to America, goes up on the White House, gets high
with the President's son. You know. And by the way,
President Carter was aware of this bust. He actually said
at the time, and I quote, I'm glad everything turned
out will Free in the Bahamas, Willie look at him,
(13:51):
Jimmy was Jimmy smooth like that. Now number three of
our bus we have Willie gets popped yet again, and
yet again, it's in Texas. He's been playing poker all
night and he was an all night game, so he's
real tired, decides to pull over on the freeway. He's
out on the edge of West Texas by Waco, right,
and I quote from Willie, it was foggy and the
(14:11):
weather was bad, so I pulled over on the side
of the road to sleep, and the policeman found me
there in the back seat. They found a roach in
the ashtray. Now they also found some pot on the floor.
He's leaving out some details pot in the car right now.
The state troopers like, man, I don't care if you
are Willie Nelson. You're going to jail because this here
is Texas. And they pay me for that. So he
gets busted. And the guy who bust him, his name
is this guy, Sergeant Mike Cooper. Sergeant Mike Cooper said, um,
(14:35):
I can't give you the details of the case. We
found lesson two ounces of marijuana in the car. It
was about both baggy and rolled cigarettes. So Willie gets
locked up and he's out by morning. Right, So that's
bust number three, number four, two thousand six. Willie Nelson
is he went a long time without getting busted through
the whole Ladies like Reagan Air eighties doesn't get busted on. Well,
(14:58):
he got he got wiser about how to move his
stuff around. I'm proud of him. Pretty much good stuff.
So in two thousand and six, Willie Nelson, he's on
his tour bus, headed back home to Texas to pay
his respects to and Richard's former governor of Texas at
her funeral. He wanted to they were close friends. He's like,
I gotta get back to Texas. But he's trying to
get through Louisiana. Louisiana is a state that's basically East
(15:19):
Texas in a lot of ways. So they have to
stop in a way station. Drug dogs come out. Of course,
they smell some pot and people like, oh, we're bringing
the drug dogs on. And the drug dogs find not one,
but one and a half pounds of pot, pounds three
ounces of magic mushrooms. There you go. So now Willie's
facing a hundred and eighty days in jail six months, right,
(15:41):
that's not bad for pounds. Think about the idiotic dare
I say ridiculous sentencing we've seen for lifetime sentencing federal
If you have three pounds that's a federal lifetime sentence,
especially if you had weapons, you had a good well yeah,
those enhancements here, but just for the during the three strikes,
(16:02):
that would be a big And doesn't that amount get
you into um, what's it called? Like distribution? It's not
just personal use. Yeah, definitely anything over announced you get
into distribution. So yeah, so he's looking at a distribution
charges and he's got the magic mushroom. So now he
looks like he's an exotic dealer. Right, So now really
defends himself. And once again I quote both bus drivers
(16:24):
were fifty years old. The other guys were sixty years old.
My sister is seventy five. I'm seventy three. So it's
like they're bust in an old folks home. Yeah, right now,
I like that will He's always trying to defer. He's like,
he doesn't mention the drugs. He just look, we're all old.
Cant let's let us have our drugs now. To get
out of the jam. William his band, they have a plan.
They can decide, you know what, Okay, there's no way
and one of us can hold this weight, but if
(16:46):
we all claim it, so they pull out an I
am Spartacus, but for the pot. Right, So they all
say that the pot is theirs. And now the people
are like, well, which which pot is yours? Some of
it in the bag is mine and some of its
mind the drummer, some of it's mine, Sister Bobby, some
of it's mine. So they all claim all of it
and so that means divided up, it's no longer now
a felony amount for most of them. And in the end,
(17:06):
Sister Bobby and Willie they get six months probation and
one thousand dollar fins. Wow, that's not bad, right, I
mean they shouldn't get anything, but that's you know, they
didn't have to do time. Yeah. No, I'm completely there
with you, because I mean they're doing it as a
show trial essentially. They like it because it's Willie. You know.
They're like, oh, we're gonna get that guy who's known
for pot and we're gonna bust them and then shake
(17:27):
a finger at all the like. I don't know, do
they still think of people as hippies whatever, people are
who smoking pot? Whatever? It's I have my opinions. I
just you know, you can you it is so much
more destructive to drink on yourself and on others. And
I don't understand why weed is illegal and we can
just let people get sauced. I don't know. Well, it's
(17:49):
market dynamics. Well sure, but when we're seeing now in
states where it is legal that there's money to be made,
there's tax money to be made. But the long term,
think back in the day, like you're talking like uh
like at the beginning of the the weed scares right,
like when you have like Ainslie and when you have
like what's his name hearst running all the scare campaigns.
(18:12):
The big thought was basically, this was a drug that
Mexicans and black people do and white women run down
to jazz clubs and do it. So it was an
undercutting of the moral order. And then also people were high,
they were less likely to join the workforce, and that's
why coffee is free at a work site, you know,
and pot is considered bad. It was all about work
and white women. So those are real the real reasons
why pott was illegal for so long, if you want
(18:33):
to get down to it. Yeah, and on top of that,
Hurst was afraid that Hemp was going to ruin his
monopoly on paper. Yes, thank you, producer Day with the
historical fact. By the way, did you know this is
just a little fun fact for you since we're talking
about the White House and smoking pot? Do you know
who was the president who loved smoking pot? Uh? The
(18:56):
first one? George Washington. He used to grow it, and
in his diary he would make note about having to
try to separate out the females from the males. You
don't do that for anything unless you want to smoke
the pot. So the very first one. He was a
gaugehead too. He was all this one has crystals on it.
This one goes out to Willie. Well, let's take a
little break and I'll get back to you with some
(19:16):
more Willie Nelson because I got more busts on that.
I can't wait, Elizabeth, I'd like to talk to you
(19:41):
about pot and Willie Nelson. So basically most of our
conversations outside of this podcast, yes, exactly, all the things
I'm always coming to you with. Hey, I've got this
new joint holder style. Bring me well, let's get back
to his bust. I've got a couple more because I
haven't told you the number yet, but it's oh, that's
right now. What were we on we were at four
(20:02):
four okay, okay, it's two thousand ten. Just a few
years later, and Willie Nelson gets busted again, this time
at the infamous Sierra Blanca Homebland Security Border inspection checkpoint
that's out on the far west edge of Texas on
the Interstate ten on the Eye ten. We've actually driven
through it together on a road trip, yes, we have.
(20:23):
And where all the musician tour busses get searched and
musicians get busted. Couple got busted there once, Snoop Spin
busted there. When Florence and the Machine drive through, they
don't go through their their tour manager will divert them
fifty miles around. Smart. Yeah. Her name is Amy Davidson,
by the way, so props Amy did good for her.
We didn't. We didn't get busted there. No, No, I
(20:43):
feel kind of left out. But I was nervous. I
won't I was looking, I was eyeballing them. We're like,
don't we know each other. But when Willie gets busted
to Sierra Blanca, which, by the way, Sarah Blanca it
means White Saw, I just I thought I'd throw that
one out there, so White Saw. He gets bust to
White South. And here's Willie's a version of the story.
I quote, I've been in California hanging out for a while,
(21:06):
and my bus had come out to pick me up
because we had a couple of tour dates to do,
and I had forgotten that there was this little bag
of weed on the bus that have been in the
back there for weeks. Naturally, when they stopped us, the
dogs came on and the first thing they went to
was that little bag of pot back there. Now, how
much do you think it was that little bag of
pot for him? A little? I don't know. So the
sheriff of Hudspith County, which is where this location is,
(21:29):
his name is Arvin West, and Arvin West is a
bit of a character. Yeah, he's a kind of local
Texas sheriff who says things like, quote, uh, he could
get a hundred days in county jail, which if he does,
I'm gonna make him cook and clean. He can wear
the stripy uniforms just like the other ones. Give me
a break. So Roscoe P. Cole change, Oh my god, completely.
(21:50):
So Willie wants to deal with this dude for a
little while because he gets released and then he tries
to avoid having to go back to Hudspith. He's like,
I don't even want to deal with that Marvin West
mother again. But Judge Becky Dean Walker, she won't accept
any mailed in plea agreements. She's like, I need to
be hot on Willie to teach him a lesson, right,
because that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna teach this
old dog new tricks. We'll teach him a lesson. And
(22:11):
I guess they're thinking that people will no one cares.
He's the scarecrow of pot. They want to use him
to like send a message. All right, it's not what's
going to happen now. I was like, get him Willie,
sending him lighters. So Judge Becky Dean Walker, she says
at the time, quote this is about the prosecutor whose
name was Kurt bramblet Kurt Bramble. It was a fan
of Willie Nelson, which pissed the judge off because he's
(22:33):
the prosecutor. So the judge tells him or actually tells
the press about him, and I quote, he's supposed to
file the charge he feels as appropriate, not what he
feels he should do for his favorite singer. I like
that voice now. To be fair, Kirk Bramblet had jokingly
offered that the county would like pretty much right off
all the charges against Willie Nelson if he would come
(22:53):
into the court and sing for him blue Eyes Crying
in the Rain. Worth it right now? County Commissioner Wayne West,
Wayne West, and not to be confused with Arvin West,
but I bet you they're related. Now, Wayne West, he
had another condition. He said, look, Willie Nelson comes back
and he has to come back to deal with his charge.
I'm going to insist that he listened to me sing
(23:14):
one of my own songs. He had a sound cloud
link he did, and he made Willie listen to it. Kid,
He played a song for Willie and someone, watch you
sit right there. We're like now just so embarrassed for
him right now. If you feel like clapping along, just
clap along. This is a good Willie Nelson is too
kind hearted to say anything. So he's that kind hearted. Now.
(23:37):
He sat there and he like clapped along or whatever
the guy asked for him, and then he got the
hell out of county. So that was his final pot bust.
And what number were we at Elizabeth? Was that six?
Very good? Very good? So we had Actually that was
his fifth. I'm sorry, I was very good. Maybe I
(23:59):
do smoke just on the on the weekends. Well, now, Whalen,
he wasn't a pot smoker. He's like, you didn't really
like the pot, but he's unlike you because what he
did like was cocaine. Oh yeah, he loved it. Yeah
he did. But that's why, well, you know, Whalon would
write songs like one of my favorite songs, this is
the title, I've always been crazy, but it's kept me
(24:19):
from going insane. Right now, that's a Whalon song. It's
a cocaine song. Now. And his autobiography, Whalon, he writes
rather extensively about how much he loves cocaine. And I
read the autobiography and uh, let's just say there are
some choice quotes like that right now, like, for instance,
detail stories about how he would wake up in the
(24:39):
middle of the night, go and start a line, smoke
a cigarette, and then go back to bed, like he
couldn't make it through a night's sleep without having to go.
And it's not like a little bump a rail. He's
doing two and three inch rail. Oh, god right. He
even said that he loved the taste of cocaine, because
he did. He liked the smell of it and the
taste of it. It It tastes like flour polish. It's terrible.
I'd the snort draino. I mean for the smell. I'm saying,
(25:02):
not for the birth now. Whaland also used to say
that he was a happy druggie. He was the happiest
druggie you ever saw, you know. But he's like, you know,
I'm not one of those down er drug users right now.
In his autobiography, he tells all these stories about how
like he would regularly stay up for six seven days
on cocaine. That ain't easy, right, It's not like speed.
You gotta be doing like every twenty thirty minutes, So
(25:24):
every twenty thirty minutes for six days, seven days in
a row. He's, oh god, yeah, now. Waland also sit
up and he would smoke about five packs of cigarettes today.
Some accountant heard this and didn't believe him. It's like,
I've done the math and it is physically impossible for
you to smoke five packs of cigarettes today. Whalen's like,
not if you're a week exactly come on now, Doc.
(25:47):
So you asked about how much it would be to
be snorting so much cocaine. We didn't really ask, but
you inferred that would be expensive. Wayland said in his
autobiography and a quote at a hundred dollars a graham,
I was buying it twenty dollars a pop. You can't
keep everybody's habit up. And my intake was reaching fift
dollars a day. Wow. You may be wondering, how is
(26:09):
it possible to snort that much cocaine? Whalen and Whalen.
It's like, I got you, here's what you need to do.
So and I quote, I would snort half a graham
on one side of my nose and a half a
graham in the other shotgun in it at the top
of Most people's heads might have come off if they've
done that, I must have had the constitution of ten men.
(26:29):
Oh my god, do you know how much cocaine half
a gram is doing it? One sitting he's like pouring
it in his ear like that could just in taking
a half gram of cocaine could probably put a lot
of people down, like literally just put them when it's
like yeah, nope, Now once again, I've got to say,
to be very responsible, Whalen would not recommend you do cocaine.
(26:53):
He said, don't ever do cocaine. It's a terrible drug.
I agree with him. Cocaine has cost me friends. I
think it's a terrible drug. Do you want to do
a drug? Smoke pot? Be like Willie Nelson might pack.
In fact, I don't even really consider pot a drug.
But we don't need to get into all that. But
Whalon used to say, I don't say any of us
to advocate drugs at all. I think drugs are killers. Ultimately,
they ruin your life, in the lives of the people
who love you. That's an important point to remember. And
(27:15):
also the cocaine he was doing didn't have fetanel in it.
It didn't like, oh, one snort and you drop. So
this is also to keep in mind. Now I want
to tell you story of Whalen out smarting the day
you're ready, I'm ready. This story goes V. Seven. I'm
gonna keep you in the seventies for most of this
that I thought so Whalen's manner during By the way,
(27:38):
Whalen and Willi have the same manager and in the
n seventies seven, Willie figures out that his manager has
not been paying his taxes, and this is what's gonna actually,
I r s tapes. He has to record this in
the eighties to pay for his taxes. He finds his
out and he's like, what the hell And he goes
to tell Whalon man that our manager is junk, right,
and so Whalen say, oh man, I'm already dealing with him.
I got him trying to say he's trying to send
(27:59):
me cocaine down from New York because he says I'm
spending too much on cocaine. So the same manager who's
not paying Willie's taxes is sending cocaine in the mail
to Whalon, right, So the guys just skirting the edge.
Eventually the guy gets busted this manager for the stuff
he does with Willie on the taxes, and then the
manager that there's this other manager, the assistant. He gets
(28:21):
caught up in this whole cocaine deal. I'm about to
tell you, And Willie is so impressed. When the guy
says I'm willing to take the charges for Whalon, he
makes him his manager. So it's just it's all country
logic here. Yeah, that's this is that's why it's called
outlawed country exactly. You know, so you're ready for some
real outlaw countries, please, Okay Whalen's managers. I told you
(28:42):
he's worried about how much Whalen is spending on cocaine
because he's spending thousands of dollars. He's worried about him
getting busted because he's buying cocaine from anybody who has
white powder, right, and he's traveling a lot, so he
doesn't always know where to get it. It It means he
has to go out to black markets and so forth.
He's putting himself at risk. He's like, look, I'll send
you some cocacaine from New York, right, So that's his
answer care package. This man can't send a check to
the I R S, but he can send a package
(29:03):
of he knows where to get cocaine, which I think
actually makes sense. So now Whalen has this right hand
man named Richie Albright. Richie Albright is going to be
all throughout this story. So when I say Richie or
Richie Allbright, that's what I'm talking. And uh, they're waiting
in the studio in Nashville, recording for his album that's
about to come out. He's also doing some tribute work
(29:24):
on a Hank Williams track, and so he's doing backing
vocals on the Hank Williams track whilsto recording his album,
and the cocaine is not arrived yet, and he's like
worried about and he's like telling Richie about it between takes,
and Richie's like, well, you know, yeah, it'll come down,
don't don't worry about it, Austin, and he's like, man,
I just really need that cocaine. And he's like yeah,
I know. So Richie's sitting there with him, he's in
and Whalen's like, man, I mean, I just don't know
(29:47):
when when it's gonna be down here. Richie's like, well,
how long has it been? Whale's like about three days.
Richie's like, well that ain't good Haus because he knows
that cocaine should not take that long to get from
New York to Nashville. They eventually here from the delivery
Sir of us that the package has arrived was like
thank god. They send the secretary out to go get it.
She goes out to the airport picks it up. She
comes back, but she apparently does not see the d
(30:08):
e A agents following her back to the studio. That's
a dumb, dumb move. Yeah, I'm gonna go pick it
up from the airport. No oh, yeah, that stays unclaimed.
If they tell you to pick something up with the
air return to send. So here's how Whalen remembers it.
His secretary returns to the studio with the package of
cocaine and I quote, and does it say in like
(30:30):
spray painted block letters, cocaine on the outside, not cocaine.
So I quote and this will answer your questions, it
said via World Courier Incorporated. I had an inkling of
what it might be. I stuck the package under my arm,
and I walked into the studio area, setting the package
down on the music stand in front of my microphone.
I opened the wrapping. Inside I found a second package.
(30:53):
I cracked that open, and I took a quick peek,
long enough to ensure myself it contained packs of cocaine.
I put it on the music stand in and I
tucked my headphones back over my ears. But instead of
music coming over the headphones, I heard a crowd of people,
there was his voice saying, we followed a package that
came in here. We're from the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency.
What happened to the package the girls just delivered? Now,
(31:13):
Richie Albrights, he's working the sound board at this time.
Then Whalen is in the recording studio, so they're separated
by that clear glass window and they have to use
a microphone to speak to each other. Well, Richie kind
of leans over on the sound board it puts his
hand over the talk back microphone, so that now Whalen
can hear everything, and that's what he's hearing in his headphones.
But the d agents they're not sound people. They don't
know what's going on. They can't see Whalen. Therefore they
(31:34):
assume Whalen can't see them or hear them. Right, he
knows everything that's going down, right, So while the d
agents are hassling on Richie Albright, it's like, there ain't
no package here and we all need to get going.
We're working here right now. Richie Albright uh is really
insistent on this, and the d agents like, no, we
gotta we're down here for the package. And so Richie
Albright says, and I quote, well, okay, you guys got
(31:55):
a search warrant? They said no, but we can get one.
I said, okay, but while you're getting that search warrant,
we're gonna keep working there because it's costing us two
and fifty dollars an hour. I told the agent, y'all
just best be quiet now. So Whalen is like scrambling
what to do with the cocaine, and he knows he's
in there with him right he's but sitting the right
on his music stands. So he's like, can I get
all of it done? He's like, I can do five
(32:16):
pounds in lake seconds. How big a straw am I
gonna need to do all of this cocaine? So Whalen
and I quote he says, I grabbed that package from
the music stand and I threw it away behind me,
and I couldn't make that shot again in a million years.
It's slid under a baseboard by the wall, just as
pretty as you please. Now, Whalens finally ditched the cocaine,
(32:37):
and Richie sees this, so he tells Whalen that they
should get back to recording the song he's trying to
give him covers. He's like, hey, wait, wait, let's just
try it from the top. And so Whalen, without missing
a beat, he starts singing a song right now. Whalen says, quote,
Richie hit play and record and the tape started turning.
I did the harmony. It was a good take and
that was the harmony that we used on the record.
So Whalen's happy with the take. He comes into the
(32:57):
control booth and he's like, hey, Richie, play that one back,
turned up the music. Let me here are that sounds.
And so Richie does this, told hits the music. The
speakers come alive. The four or five D agents have
to listen to Whalen singing all loud in the speakers.
He sits down. Richie Albright leans over next to him
and he starts like pointing out the speakers like they're
talking about the music. He's like, do you know what's
going on? Whalen whispers back, hell, yeah, I know what's happening.
(33:17):
The D agents and now they don't know anything about
what these two are talking aboutcause they're waving their fingers.
They keep talking about they're talking about music. Right now.
He's like, Richie's like looking at him and say, hey, hoss,
I'll take this I'll take this one for you. I'm
taking it. And and Whalen's like what he tells what
he tells riche allbright, you ain't taken now, he assumes
his right hand man. Just be calm and don't let
(33:39):
them sons a bit. You scare you. So the two
of them have a plan. They're gonna manage to get
this cocaine pass these D e A Agents. Now, how
they decided to do that is left to be decided.
So Whalen is sitting there and he's like, okay, obviously
the man of the hour. The d agents. Once the
song ends, they come up and they go, Whalen, uh,
we got these warrants for you. So Whalen and his
autobiography recounts he took out to warrants, one for possession
(34:01):
of cocaine and the other for conspiracy with further intent
to distribute. I took some time to look them over,
and after a while I handed them back. I don't know,
I shrug, But you said possession. I don't see anything
around here, do you, And we know it's here, Whalen,
the agent says, right. Whalen says, well, if it is here,
finding it might be a problem. So now it's a challenge.
(34:21):
And let's see, you boys are real smart with your
your patent leather shoes. So Whalen's like, I gotta get
back to work. We're recording this album. So he and
Albright keep it up with there like Masquerade. Now he's
still trying to decide what to do. He's taking the
cocaine off music stand. He's tossing under the floorboards, but
he knows that's not the best hiding place because the
agents will eventually tear the exactly. So he's sitting there
like trying to decide. I got him stalled for right now,
(34:43):
what can I do? And Richie's like I got a plan.
So Richie Albright it's like, uh hey, hey, Whalen, you
you're going back there, and you know we'll take this
next track. So Whalen does as he's told, goes back
in the recording studio with the cocaine and he starts
getting ready. He sings about six teen bars and the
next track, Richie hits the talk back button. Uh, someoney,
need to change that microphone. Hang going right there, I'm
gonna come and change that microphone. So he gets up
(35:04):
and then he goes in the recording booth. He's like,
where is that? So kind of points out it with
his eyes about where it is, and so then Richie
Albright uh, he picks the story back up. At this point,
he says, so I go out there and moving the microphone,
I found the package. I put it in my pants.
I come back out right and around that same time
Whalen's booking agent arrives. So now the scenes getting more chaotic.
And by the way, the booking agent is half drunk,
(35:26):
so he shows half drunk with all these d agents.
You know what's going on here? What are y'all doing?
We're paying a lot of money and he's getting allowed with.
Whalen starts yelling at the bookie agent, you shut up.
We needed to deal, so the two of them start fighting.
This gives the distraction that Ritchie needs to go and
run off to the bathroom, so he then slips the
way to the bathroom, takes a cocaine out of his pants,
dumps it in the toilet flush. The d agents all
(35:48):
turned their head when they hear that flush. They know
exactly what it means, and as Whalen would later bragg
in his autobiography, they never did find anything, but since
the DA they still decided to arrest Whalen. Yeah, they
busted him, with or without the cocaine. He has to
go and get arrested and do the purp walk. And
then eventually the FEDS the case falls apart because the
bad arrest warrants because they didn't have it for the studio,
(36:10):
they had it for his office. There's a whole problem,
and then the prosecutors have to let it go. Whalon
takes that as an inspiration to write a new hit
song called don't you think this outlaw? Bits done gone
out of hand? A little fit? Yeah right. So eventually
in the eighties, Whylan decides to quit doing cocaine because
of these various issues in just like the cocaine keeps
bringing in. Now, after this quick little break and you
(36:33):
guys can enjoy some morsels of advertisements, I'll get back
to you with a very promised story of the cocaine bear.
(36:59):
So I told you Elizabeth Whalen had been able to
sneak the cocaine pass to the agents thanks to Richie,
all right, and he manages not to go to jail.
So he also, as I told you right before the break,
decides to quit doing cocaine. Good for him, right, great choice.
So when he quits, he decides to do it the
country way, which means cold turkey, no help, no no
(37:19):
going to rehab, no talking to anybody. He just locks
himself away and says, I'm just gonna sweat it out right.
But first he's got to get rid of all the temptations.
So he goes around his house and he gathers up
all his little secret stashes because he's been tucking away
cocaine for years. He never wants to run out of cocaine.
It's everywhere, it is everywhere. So he gathers up all
of his cocaine and then he hands it to his wife,
(37:40):
Jesse Coulter. Now, how much cocaine do you think he
gathered up and from his house and all these little
bits and pieces over here in the sixty pounds. Not quite.
It wasn't a small child of cocaine. It was just
a nice, reasonable half pound of cocaine half pound away.
As he's like, I need some just in case I'm
going to run out, like Columbia is gonna stop making cocaine. Yeah,
(38:00):
So Jesse takes all this coke to the bathroom and
he hands are this half pound of cocaine and she's
singing the praises of Jesus the whole time. Right, So
she's in there, she's got a half pound of cocaine.
She's dumping in the toilet, flushing and going, oh, praise Jesus,
Thank you, Jesus, Sweet Jesus, Jesus is great, Jesus is love.
And then meanwhile all the like fish in the watershed,
(38:21):
totally different, thank you. So, as I told you, we're
going to get into the story of the Cocaine Bear. Now,
Wayland Jennings, as I told you, is a big lover
of cocaine and then eventually quit. Yes, he still had
like a hankering for like that rough knock about cocaine
lifestyle he used to enjoy. So even after he quit
(38:41):
doing cocaine, he was still have certain cocaine collectibles. One
of those cocaine collectibles was the Cocaine Bear. It has
just like a cocaine hippo kind of it has something
to do with Pablo Escobar. Right. There was this seventy
eight words story published in The New York Times sev
seventy eight words. It's a very short story micro fiction.
(39:03):
Yeah like that. You don't see that newspapers really much anymore. Right.
The headline was cocaine and a dead bear. Oh well,
it's not that bad bears die, but yeah, that was
the headline. It was real New York Times eighties dead bear.
You're like, oh, so did someone shoot him? Want a subway?
What happened? So the Times paints the scene and I
quote a hundred and seventy five pound black bear apparently
(39:25):
died of an overdose of cocaine after discovering a batch
of the drug. This bear was found in the North
Georgia Woods. Now, the bear had not purchased this cocaine.
The bear wasn't like a cocaine But the bear wasn't
hanging out with Whalen Jennings. Nothing about the whale and
all was involved in this part of But the bear
did do a lot of coke. Right now, the bear
had discovered a duffel bag full of cocaine just sitting
(39:48):
in the woods, and being a bear, he ate the
cocaine and that was it for Mr Curious Bear. So
seventy five pounds of cocaine were in one duffel bag
and there was multiple right, yes, right, he's like mustache.
He was traped the woods and his day bag. So
(40:10):
it was about four and fifty million dollars worth of cocaine. Goodness, yeah,
it's a good amount of cocaine. There was these cocaine
smuggers you've been flying it up from Columbia and they
plan to deliver the cocaine into the southeast United States.
And things went awry and the smuggler had to leap
from his little tiny cess in the plane. But decide,
do you know what, I'm taking the cocaine with me.
So he like straps the cocaine to him in the
duffel bag, gets his parachute, throws a couple of bags out,
(40:32):
and then dives out of the plane. Yeah, doesn't work
well for him. So the cocaine lands in the Appalachian Woods.
The smuggler lands in a driveway in a suburb one
state away. Since survived the fall, that story bind you
will soon be a new movie called Cocaine Bear. I
swear to God it's coming one and it should be
I believe ray Leota's last film. And I bet you
(40:55):
he went to the Oscar for it. Because it's a
cocaine movie ray Leota, ray Leota as as cocaine. He
starts as cocaine. No, he's the bear. He's going to
be like in a little bear costume. I like that. Yeah,
it's like a bright eyeliner. That's how you know it's
Leota exactly. So this news story, I told you it's
(41:17):
about a bear. It's it's about Wayale and Jennings. How
did they come together? I am afraid to know. And
if it wasn't the cocaine, what was it? Taxidermy your
other favorite? Yeah, so someone gets this bear. They taxidermy
the bear. They renamed the bear Pablo Escobar. Is that
like something from Bilder Bear? So this new the newest
(41:39):
latest from Bilderbart. Pablo Escobar goes on display at a
rest stop in Georgia. Oh god, so yeah, Pablo Escobar.
He's at the visitor center of the Chattahoochee River National
Recreation Area. Did they have him in like board shorts
and sunglasses, like doing like a cool guy post films
up like he's hanging up all the all of the
(42:00):
taxidermy cool guy. It's the cool guy club. Was he
stuffed with cocaine? That would have been a good use
of the cocaine. But if he is, yeah, no that
he was not, because Whalen tried. That's why he bought
the bear. No, it's like I thought, quit. No, I
promise you he did. In the nineties, there's a fire
at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Then the whole building,
(42:21):
the visitor center burns. They have to clear out all
the Indian artifacts. They have to clear out all those
various local like the like, but exactly, thank you, all right,
and then of course i'll see Pablo Esco bear. So
they take this and they put all in store junites, right,
and then a month later after they rebuilt, the recreation
center burn. No, no, it was all saved, right, just
(42:44):
the recreation center itself, but most of the stuff that
was again glass cases and stuff, seemed to manage it
through the fire. It's mostly a structure fire, right, So
it's all in these storage units. Takes a month to
rebuild it. They go down to the storage units to
go and grab the stuff to take it back. There's
nothing in the storage units, Dunton, all gone right, just empty,
not even a note like I took out any of
(43:04):
the cocaine. Nothing, right, so Pablo Escobart gone. So he
was just gonna suck on the fur the bear in there.
I know there's something there. The bear he ate seventy
five pounds. He actually didn't eat that much. But anyway,
Whalen Jennings ends up with this bear. Right now you're
wondering how the hell could Whalon Jennings end up with
the bear. He he's not gonna be hanging out. People
(43:26):
are breaking into storage. Maybe he isn't these truck stops.
Who knows right turns out? Well, let back up. I
need you to know some about Whalen Jennings. The dude
love to collect stuff like it wasn't like he just
had the Publo Escobert. He also had a robe the
Muhammad Ali had warm and he beat up Leon Spinks
like in the eighties fight. He had one. He hit
(43:46):
two of Willie Nelson's braids that he had been given
his braid yea like when Willie cut his braid to
gave him to Whalon, and Whalen's like, thank you, Willy,
and he proudly displayed them in his home. He had
a motorcycle that once belonged to Buddy Holly, who he
was a guitar player for but exactly, and uh, he
had a pair of dukes of Hazzard General lead Dodge
chargers because you know he was the narrator for that
great job on that And he had cocaine Bear. So
(44:09):
this is all in his collection. He's a collector. Yeah exactly.
The police who are supposed to solve this mystery, they
eventually tracked down the stolen artifacts and they show up
at a pawn shop in Nashville and the shop owners like, okay,
you got me man. They're like, well, wait where is
all this stuff? Like I sold it, man, stuff is
all gone? Wait what what? Okay? Where are the Native
American artifacts? He's like, ah, beats me, Like, well, do
(44:30):
you have receipts? I probably can find him. He's like okay,
well where we really would like to find Pablo Escobart.
And he's like, okay, I have that one. I do
know where. They care more about that than the artifacts.
Oh yeah, that's the one that when the press wants
to know about And where is Hazel's butter churn? Exactly? No,
I just need the bear. The cocaine bear will be
good bear. So guy's like okay, well I happen to
(44:50):
know where that is, and so he writes down Whalen
Jennings address slips into the cops, where cops go and
they drive across Nashville. The show of at Whalen's plays.
Whalen sitting outside and he's hey, officers, just give them
a big old howdy, and they're like, hey, ware, and
they started walking to him. They're like, no, Whitland, we
came out here because we heard you might have some
property that could have been stolen from down to George Away.
And he's like, what are you talking about? What do
(45:11):
you what do you got there? And he's like, we're
looking for a cocaine bear and oh yeah, Pablo Escobart,
Like you have. I can't take that. He's called Pablo
Escobar best. So the police are like, yeah, man, Whalen, look,
we don't want to have any problems. We're not gonna
tell the press about it. If you can just give
us the cocaine bear, we'll go take it back down
to Georgia. All problems solved. It's like, you know, officers,
(45:32):
I'd love to, but I'd no longer have Pablo Escobart.
They're like, what do you mean you don't have Pablo Escobar.
He's like, look, man, I don't have it. They're like, okay,
well did you sell it? And he's like, no, no one, baby,
I may have traded it. And he's like, what do
you mean traded it? I gave it to a Las
Vegas coake dealer. Like what. Yeah. So when they hear that,
these Nashville cops, local cops are like, man, ain't no way.
(45:53):
No one's gonna send us to Las Vegas to go
get a stuffed taxidermy bear. So that's where the tale
of the Missing Cocaine Bear ends. Nobody knows. Only Whaland
knows where the cocaine Bear went. That is, whoever actually
has it. Because this no, they didn't well they didn't.
They took his word and so they believed in what
he said. Yeah, it's over. Cocaine Bear became sentient and
(46:14):
was hiding in the basement. He may have never actually
been dead. He was just like real stiff from all
the cocaine. He wasn't actually taxed, gritting the whole tim well.
That is the mystery of the Cocaine Bear. Except for
one other thing. No charges were filed against Whaland. They
let him go good. That was his last big legal Yeah,
(46:35):
so there you go. So my favorite drug bust from
Outlaw Country? I love it. I love it. So, Elizabeth,
what's a ridiculous takeaway here? So my takeaway would be
that Outlaw Country is the coolest of all genres. Heart agree,
love it? Um, And I would say that if you
have a cocaine bear in your house, I would I
(46:56):
would keep that under your hat. I wouldn't let people know.
I might even give the bear I had to wear,
seeing act like cocaine bear wouldn't be wearing a hat
like that. It exactly Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway? Look
at me? I'm all a flood as I care. You
see me, you hear me. I want to know about
(47:17):
your journey. Let me have it. Well, my journey is this,
don't do cocaine. It's a terrible drug. Do not do cocaine.
There's nothing good. So other than that, I think Willie
Nelson has put it best in his song nothing I
can do about it now. And if you will allow me,
I'm gonna give you just a couple of lyrics from
this song because this is like, um, I don't want
(47:39):
to say a model of my life, but it's an
operating standard. You're ready. I've got a long list of
real good reasons for all the things I've done. I've
got a picture in the back of my mind of
what I've lost and what I've won. I've survived every situation.
No one win, to freeze and wind, to run and regret.
It's just a memory written on my brow and there's
nothing I can do about it now. Amen, Well, thanks
(48:02):
for joining us. I am Elizabeth Dutton and I am
Willie Nelson. Hey have about it. It's her Willie Nelson.
You can find us online a Ridiculous Crime on both
Twitter and Instagram. You gotta tip for us about a
ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about it? Hit us up.
You wanna confess to Ridiculous Crime, Let us no Email
(48:22):
us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. We'll catch
you next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Snoop Dogg's personal
joint roller Dave Cousting, researches by cannabis cultivation connoisseur and
small batch curator Marissa Brown. The theme song is by
Coach of the California Crowns Thomas Lee and our resident
(48:45):
midnight Rider Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Jimmy Carter,
was Right, Bolan and Noel Honey Suckle, Rose Brown. Say
It one more time, we Dequias Crow. Ridiculous Crime is
a production of I Heart Radio four more podcasts. For
(49:07):
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of I Heeart Radio. Hey Elizabeth, Yes,
Zaren you know what's ridiculous? I do. I'm going to
there's a project that was It's called the Museum of
Non Visible Art. Are you familiar with this? No, I've
never seen it. It's art that doesn't exist physically. It's
(00:24):
just what's imagined by the artist, and you can buy it.
You buy a card that has a description of this
imagination thing and you hang on your wall. And then
this woman in she bought a piece called fresh Air
for ten dollars. What con Man created this? Well? I
love it. I'm going to tell you here's the description
(00:46):
of the art. A unique piece, only this one is
for sale. The art you are purchasing is like buying
an endless tank of oxygen. No matter where you are,
you always have the ability to take a breath of
the most delicious, mean smelling air that the Earth can produce.
It goes on, but I just don't want to read
it anyway. Um So do you know who the artist is?
(01:08):
Christo James Franco. Oh my god, I was close. Yeah,
that's pretty close. Christo James Franco. You know, you know, yeah,
So that's that's ridiculous. That is mad ridiculous. So basically
you're just buying a story from James Franco. Yeah, he's
not a very good storyteller though. Yeah. You ever read
Palo Alto his short story, any of the short stories? Yes,
(01:30):
I have, Yeah, because we're both from the Bay Area.
And uh, that's all I got to say about that. Well,
I've got a story for you, miss, and I'm ready. Now.
This is a story of beloved American treasure Willie Nelson.
You know him, you love him? Yes, Well, this is
about the time he visited the White House and him
being Willie, he went up and said, hey, how do
(01:50):
I get up on the roof because I got this
number I want to heat up. Now, there's also another
story I gotta tell you, because this one is a
double It's about Whitlan and Willie. I love they're together.
I love them separately, but I love when they're together.
They're amazing together. Yeah, I mean they they're way better
than salt and pepper, chocolate and vanilla everything you can name.
This impairs Whalen and Willie on top of that mountain. Now,
(02:11):
the Whalen story, I'm going to tell you is about
this time that he bought a stolen bear. A bear yeah,
who was famous for eating a duffel bag of cocaine.
I can't Okay, you're ready, totally get ready, because here
comes some ridiculous stories of drug busts of my heroes
of Outlaw Country. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about
(02:52):
absurd and outrageous capers, heights, and cons. It's all always
murder free and ridiculous. Elizabeth, do you remember the first
time that you smoked pot? No? Man, I have no
memory of it. No, well, I'll tell you this much.
Everyone is the first time, right j Willie Nelson? Can
(03:14):
you imagine or even just guess how old Willie Nelson
was when he first smoked pot? Pretty good? Guess, pretty good?
Guess much older than that, actually much older. Surprise. Well,
the year was four. And if you know when Willie
was born, that can probably help, but I don't know
that's common knowledge. Willie was He was down in Texas
at the time. He was in a bar outside of
Fort Worth. He was twenty one years old at the time,
(03:38):
and at that point he'd been a professional musician since
he was thirteen years old. Eight year professional career at
this point, so he knew how to like throw back
the bourbon with some grown ass men energy. Right now.
At that same time, he's not smoking pot. He's not
even entered into his world. He's hanging out at this bar.
He's got his buddy, musician Fred Lockwin. Fred's like, hey, well,
(03:58):
I'm gonna stap outside and go blow t Willi's like
do do what now? And he's like, yeah, you know,
I'm gonna go do gonna go blow some tea? Fred
tells him, you know, like yeah, cigarettes, you know, head cabbage,
you know, come on, man, likes him procoli. Willie's like,
I what do you owe the reeferre? You're talking about
the reefer right, and he's like yeah, yeah, man, come
on now. So Fred rolls up a joint, he lights it,
(04:19):
takes a few tokes, and it's like, Willie, you gonna
smoke with me. Willie's like hesitant. Willie Nelson hasn't have
a joint pass to him. Fred pushes it on him.
He's like, come on, man, and he says, and I
quote get high and be somebody. Well there it was, right.
He just handed Willie Nelson his future. He's like get
high and be somebody Willie Nelson like bet Son. So
(04:42):
the funny thing is for me, I don't know about
for you. Does nothing for him? He gets high, doesn't
get high, doesn't work on Willie Nelson. First time you
get the first time. I was under the impression that
for a lot of people, the first time they smoke weed,
it doesn't. I haven't heard this. He didn't. That was
not the case for me. I got blitzed, then went
right to a family function and was like, that was
a mistake. Anyways, Second time Willie Nelson smokes, boy howdy,
(05:06):
that time it works, and then he becomes Willie Nelson. Now, Elizabeth,
I promised you the story Willie Nelson getting high at
the White House. Yes, right now, I would like to
tell you this story. But first I need you to
do me a favor. Now you can't. I want you
to close your eyes. Okay, you your eyes closed. Now
you're looking at me, eyes closed, dot in you're ready. Yes,
(05:28):
I'm very disobedient today. I noticed this. Now I'm paying.
Now I'm participating. Okay, eyes closed. You're standing in the
rose Garden of the White House. The year is Jimmy
Carter is the President. Willie Nelson is on stage and
he's performing for just a small crowd. Now he finishes
playing Whiskey River. And for whatever reason, you have a headache,
(05:53):
this pounding number in my head. I gotta go rest.
So you make your excuses to leave the Rose Garden.
You step inside the White House. You find a quiet space.
You're left alone in the White House. It's the end
of the seventies, you know the beginning. Security is different
in the White House. They allow you to just meander
through the halls. You go past the Lincoln bedroom, you
look at some portraits, some bust Your head still pounding,
(06:14):
so you go and you sit down in a big,
overstuffed chair. You rest. He started drift off minutes later,
you don't know how long. All of a sudden you
come to and there's the son of the President, Chip Carter,
standing over you and he's asking you're Willie Nelson is
like what? Wait? What? And before you can answer, boom,
you hear this voice. It's Willie Nelson. He's like, you're
(06:36):
looking for me. You're like wait and you turn your head.
Willie Nelson is in the room with you and Chip
and you're like, hey, what's going on, Chip says, hey,
come on, follow me. I know the spot, Like is
he talking to me? You don't know what to do.
You still have this headache, but you're like real curious
where this is going. So you ahead and I walter Mondale. No,
not in this instance. Normally would be multi walter Mondale
(06:59):
in this and most of my paying this time not.
You're not even Gerald and Ferraro, just Elizabeth Dutton hanging
out in a chair with a headache. Willie Nelson, Chip
Carter got it. Chip Carter says, come on, follow me.
You're like, forget it, I'll do it, and you sid
to follow. Now you go on and Chip Carter leads
you and Willie downstairs, and you're like, okay, you see
(07:19):
that there's this one lane bowling alley, Like h he
tells you Nixon had to put in Nixon, big bowler
that Nixon. You're like, oh, I can see that kind
of a square. Chips like, hey, Willy, you want to
you want a bowl a game? And you're like wondering,
who's gonna ask you? But Will before you can even
be offended, will He's like, no, but you know how
we can get up on the roof and You're like,
I think I know what Willie wants, and Chip Carter
(07:41):
is like, yeah, I know the way. Follow me, so
that he takes you back upstairs and get back in
the White House from the ground level, leads you down
the hallway into like looks like a ballroom. It's a
big empty room. He leads you over by the windows,
and there is this door. The secret door does a
little thing that you don't notice. It all sudden the
door pops open. He goes, come on, follow me, lead
you up the stairway. You're following Willie. You're just right
(08:04):
behind Willie, like you know, facing his levies stairs stairs,
staring and then all of a sudden you her door
open and the light and you pop out and you're
on top of the White House. Is that when it
had solar panels? Yeah, because Jimmy Carter would have put
it on the solar panels. Look at you, I like this, yes,
Willie Nelson says, look at that view. You guys stand
(08:25):
there a moment. You gaze out of Washington, d C.
It's all lit up because it's nighttime now. Looks just beautiful. Elizabeth.
You see that the Washington Monument over there, National mall
look at the capital now, Willie. He takes a swig
at the beer he brought with him, and so he's
just strutting through the White House with a bottle of beer.
Love it. And he fishes a joint out of his pocket.
He calls it an Austin torpedo, and it's like, you
(08:47):
gotta light for this Austin torpedo. Oh my god. Then
Chip passes him a lighter. He lights it, sparks that
baby to life, takes a couple of pulls, passes it
to you. You're getting high with Willie Nelson on the
roof of them, of the most powerful person in the world.
When do I tell them I'm a d agent. Keep
that to yourself, Keep that under your cowboy. Now, when
(09:08):
Willie records the same events later on, for some reason,
I don't know why, Elizabeth, he leaves you out of
the retelling. Well, you know, we don't get your feelings.
It's Willie. He he may have just forgotten. We had
a falling out. Was it the Maui thing? It was?
I don't want to talk about the Maui inside. Okay,
we'll put it out of your mind and I'll just
give you the quote that he says his recollection of
the events, You're ready, and I quote. Sitting on top
(09:31):
of the roof of the White House in Washington, d C.
Late last night, with a beer in one hand and
a fat Austin torpedo on the other, I drifted off
into a reflective mood. My companion on the roof was
pointing out to me the sights in the layout of
how the streets run in Washington. It was a good
way to soak up a geography lesson laid back on
the roof of the White House, so I let the
weed cover me with a pleasing cloud and reflected on
(09:53):
what long strained trip it's been from smoking cedar barking
grape vine at the age of four or five, to
get and puke on your shoes drunk with my dad
Ira at the age of nine, to sitting on the
roof of the White House sharing a number in the
warm human night. I guess on the roof of the
White House is the safest place I can think to
smoke dope. Hell, it'd only been a couple of days
ago that I was busted and locked in jail in
(10:14):
the Bahamas for a handful of weed that I never
even had a chance to set on fire. Now you
may you're wondering, does the President and the Secret Service
know that you're up here getting high with Willie Nelson
and the president's son. The answer is maybe, yeah. Now,
Jimmy Carter has confirmed this story. By the way, this
actually did happen. Carter has said, and I quote when
(10:36):
Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked
pot in the White House, and he said his companion
was one of the servants at the White House. Actually
it was one of my sons. So even Carter knew
that his boy was up there getting high. Yeah. I
don't think stuff happens without people knowing, especially but Willie Nelson,
if he's in the White House, where's our honored guests,
where's my eldest son? I think you can do it
(10:57):
math anyway. So these days now pot is basically legal
in most states in America. I think, what's like twenty
eight out of the fifties something. But for most of
my teenage years pot was totally illegal. My college year,
same thing. Now these are my also my dumb criminal years.
So at any point I would I could have caught
a charge on pot and it would have ruined my life.
It's absolutely ridiculous, right, I mean, now they're comedians. A
(11:20):
lot of comedians have made this joke toom Sagura wanted.
The one that comes to minds I think is my
favorite version of this joke. Could you imagine telling a
teenager today all the things that we had to do
to buy pot from drug dealers? Right, I would drive
sixty seventy miles, I'd I'd hang out with somebody I
hung out with drug deals where they're playing with their
(11:40):
pet snake. And I mean, I'm talking like an hour,
I gotta listen to talk about Call of Duty. I
don't even play Call of Duty. I'm like, oh yeah, man,
that's the worst. Yeah, with the rumbling and so they
pull out an acoustic guitar and you have to listen
to them play for a while. Oh, oh my god.
The jam sessions. Yes, I've been there when harmonicas have
come out. I've paid the price. I bet well, you
probably didn't have to do this because I don't imagine
(12:02):
you were buying a lot of pot when you're a teenager. Yeah,
well it was bad out there was just letting you know,
you know, So if you had to guess, just take
a wild guess, how many times do you think Willie
Nelson has been arrested for pot? I know about the
tax evasion, but the pot I don't know. Like I
don't tell me, I'm not gonna tell you. I'm going
(12:23):
to run him down for you. Seventy four, Willie Nelson
gets arrested for the first time. Now there's that was
about fifty years ago, so there's very few records on that.
So what that one? Will just call us the first one? Right?
Second time he gets used in nineteen seventy seven, He's
been out on tour. He wanted to grab some rest
and relaxation, so Willy planned to go down to the Bahamas.
He decides he brings some weed with him. You know,
(12:45):
maybe the weed in the Bahamas sucks. I don't know. Anyway,
Willie gets caught weed in his jeans, gets arrested, goes
to jail. Now, Willie, is that the one he was
referring to? Good memory? Look at you? You are paying
because I don't I don't smoke weed. You're right here
just eatening fast. Well, Willie, he doesn't let this whole
pot chard stop him He's like, I'm in the Bahamas.
(13:05):
That came down to here to relax. So he has
somebody smuggling a six pack into the jail. He starts
getting drunk in jail by himself. He gets released from jail,
but by the time he gets released, he's drunk, and
so when he gets out, he immediately falls over and
hurts himself and has to go to a hospital. Then
he's in the hospital. He gets let out of the hospital,
he has to go to court. He goes to court.
He still hasn't done any rest and relaxation. Goes to court.
(13:29):
The judge tells him, look, man, we're gonna release you
on the condition that you never come back to the
Bahamas ever again. Well, he's like bet. He goes back
to America, goes up on the White House, gets high
with the President's son. You know. And by the way,
President Carter was aware of this bust. He actually said
at the time, and I quote, I'm glad everything turned
out will Free in the Bahamas, Willie look at him,
(13:51):
Jimmy was Jimmy smooth like that. Now number three of
our bus we have Willie gets popped yet again, and
yet again, it's in Texas. He's been playing poker all
night and he was an all night game, so he's
real tired, decides to pull over on the freeway. He's
out on the edge of West Texas by Waco, right,
and I quote from Willie, it was foggy and the
(14:11):
weather was bad, so I pulled over on the side
of the road to sleep, and the policeman found me
there in the back seat. They found a roach in
the ashtray. Now they also found some pot on the floor.
He's leaving out some details pot in the car right now.
The state troopers like, man, I don't care if you
are Willie Nelson. You're going to jail because this here
is Texas. And they pay me for that. So he
gets busted. And the guy who bust him, his name
is this guy, Sergeant Mike Cooper. Sergeant Mike Cooper said, um,
(14:35):
I can't give you the details of the case. We
found lesson two ounces of marijuana in the car. It
was about both baggy and rolled cigarettes. So Willie gets
locked up and he's out by morning. Right, So that's
bust number three, number four, two thousand six. Willie Nelson
is he went a long time without getting busted through
the whole Ladies like Reagan Air eighties doesn't get busted on. Well,
(14:58):
he got he got wiser about how to move his
stuff around. I'm proud of him. Pretty much good stuff.
So in two thousand and six, Willie Nelson, he's on
his tour bus, headed back home to Texas to pay
his respects to and Richard's former governor of Texas at
her funeral. He wanted to they were close friends. He's like,
I gotta get back to Texas. But he's trying to
get through Louisiana. Louisiana is a state that's basically East
(15:19):
Texas in a lot of ways. So they have to
stop in a way station. Drug dogs come out. Of course,
they smell some pot and people like, oh, we're bringing
the drug dogs on. And the drug dogs find not one,
but one and a half pounds of pot, pounds three
ounces of magic mushrooms. There you go. So now Willie's
facing a hundred and eighty days in jail six months, right,
(15:41):
that's not bad for pounds. Think about the idiotic dare
I say ridiculous sentencing we've seen for lifetime sentencing federal
If you have three pounds that's a federal lifetime sentence,
especially if you had weapons, you had a good well yeah,
those enhancements here, but just for the during the three strikes,
(16:02):
that would be a big And doesn't that amount get
you into um, what's it called? Like distribution? It's not
just personal use. Yeah, definitely anything over announced you get
into distribution. So yeah, so he's looking at a distribution
charges and he's got the magic mushroom. So now he
looks like he's an exotic dealer. Right, So now really
defends himself. And once again I quote both bus drivers
(16:24):
were fifty years old. The other guys were sixty years old.
My sister is seventy five. I'm seventy three. So it's
like they're bust in an old folks home. Yeah, right now,
I like that will He's always trying to defer. He's like,
he doesn't mention the drugs. He just look, we're all old.
Cant let's let us have our drugs now. To get
out of the jam. William his band, they have a plan.
They can decide, you know what, Okay, there's no way
and one of us can hold this weight, but if
(16:46):
we all claim it, so they pull out an I
am Spartacus, but for the pot. Right, So they all
say that the pot is theirs. And now the people
are like, well, which which pot is yours? Some of
it in the bag is mine and some of its
mind the drummer, some of it's mine, Sister Bobby, some
of it's mine. So they all claim all of it
and so that means divided up, it's no longer now
a felony amount for most of them. And in the end,
(17:06):
Sister Bobby and Willie they get six months probation and
one thousand dollar fins. Wow, that's not bad, right, I
mean they shouldn't get anything, but that's you know, they
didn't have to do time. Yeah. No, I'm completely there
with you, because I mean they're doing it as a
show trial essentially. They like it because it's Willie. You know.
They're like, oh, we're gonna get that guy who's known
for pot and we're gonna bust them and then shake
(17:27):
a finger at all the like. I don't know, do
they still think of people as hippies whatever, people are
who smoking pot? Whatever? It's I have my opinions. I
just you know, you can you it is so much
more destructive to drink on yourself and on others. And
I don't understand why weed is illegal and we can
just let people get sauced. I don't know. Well, it's
(17:49):
market dynamics. Well sure, but when we're seeing now in
states where it is legal that there's money to be made,
there's tax money to be made. But the long term,
think back in the day, like you're talking like uh
like at the beginning of the the weed scares right,
like when you have like Ainslie and when you have
like what's his name hearst running all the scare campaigns.
(18:12):
The big thought was basically, this was a drug that
Mexicans and black people do and white women run down
to jazz clubs and do it. So it was an
undercutting of the moral order. And then also people were high,
they were less likely to join the workforce, and that's
why coffee is free at a work site, you know,
and pot is considered bad. It was all about work
and white women. So those are real the real reasons
why pott was illegal for so long, if you want
(18:33):
to get down to it. Yeah, and on top of that,
Hurst was afraid that Hemp was going to ruin his
monopoly on paper. Yes, thank you, producer Day with the
historical fact. By the way, did you know this is
just a little fun fact for you since we're talking
about the White House and smoking pot? Do you know
who was the president who loved smoking pot? Uh? The
(18:56):
first one? George Washington. He used to grow it, and
in his diary he would make note about having to
try to separate out the females from the males. You
don't do that for anything unless you want to smoke
the pot. So the very first one. He was a
gaugehead too. He was all this one has crystals on it.
This one goes out to Willie. Well, let's take a
little break and I'll get back to you with some
(19:16):
more Willie Nelson because I got more busts on that.
I can't wait, Elizabeth, I'd like to talk to you
(19:41):
about pot and Willie Nelson. So basically most of our
conversations outside of this podcast, yes, exactly, all the things
I'm always coming to you with. Hey, I've got this
new joint holder style. Bring me well, let's get back
to his bust. I've got a couple more because I
haven't told you the number yet, but it's oh, that's
right now. What were we on we were at four
(20:02):
four okay, okay, it's two thousand ten. Just a few
years later, and Willie Nelson gets busted again, this time
at the infamous Sierra Blanca Homebland Security Border inspection checkpoint
that's out on the far west edge of Texas on
the Interstate ten on the Eye ten. We've actually driven
through it together on a road trip, yes, we have.
(20:23):
And where all the musician tour busses get searched and
musicians get busted. Couple got busted there once, Snoop Spin
busted there. When Florence and the Machine drive through, they
don't go through their their tour manager will divert them
fifty miles around. Smart. Yeah. Her name is Amy Davidson,
by the way, so props Amy did good for her.
We didn't. We didn't get busted there. No, No, I
(20:43):
feel kind of left out. But I was nervous. I
won't I was looking, I was eyeballing them. We're like,
don't we know each other. But when Willie gets busted
to Sierra Blanca, which, by the way, Sarah Blanca it
means White Saw, I just I thought I'd throw that
one out there, so White Saw. He gets bust to
White South. And here's Willie's a version of the story.
I quote, I've been in California hanging out for a while,
(21:06):
and my bus had come out to pick me up
because we had a couple of tour dates to do,
and I had forgotten that there was this little bag
of weed on the bus that have been in the
back there for weeks. Naturally, when they stopped us, the
dogs came on and the first thing they went to
was that little bag of pot back there. Now, how
much do you think it was that little bag of
pot for him? A little? I don't know. So the
sheriff of Hudspith County, which is where this location is,
(21:29):
his name is Arvin West, and Arvin West is a
bit of a character. Yeah, he's a kind of local
Texas sheriff who says things like, quote, uh, he could
get a hundred days in county jail, which if he does,
I'm gonna make him cook and clean. He can wear
the stripy uniforms just like the other ones. Give me
a break. So Roscoe P. Cole change, Oh my god, completely.
(21:50):
So Willie wants to deal with this dude for a
little while because he gets released and then he tries
to avoid having to go back to Hudspith. He's like,
I don't even want to deal with that Marvin West
mother again. But Judge Becky Dean Walker, she won't accept
any mailed in plea agreements. She's like, I need to
be hot on Willie to teach him a lesson, right,
because that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna teach this
old dog new tricks. We'll teach him a lesson. And
(22:11):
I guess they're thinking that people will no one cares.
He's the scarecrow of pot. They want to use him
to like send a message. All right, it's not what's
going to happen now. I was like, get him Willie,
sending him lighters. So Judge Becky Dean Walker, she says
at the time, quote this is about the prosecutor whose
name was Kurt bramblet Kurt Bramble. It was a fan
of Willie Nelson, which pissed the judge off because he's
(22:33):
the prosecutor. So the judge tells him or actually tells
the press about him, and I quote, he's supposed to
file the charge he feels as appropriate, not what he
feels he should do for his favorite singer. I like
that voice now. To be fair, Kirk Bramblet had jokingly
offered that the county would like pretty much right off
all the charges against Willie Nelson if he would come
(22:53):
into the court and sing for him blue Eyes Crying
in the Rain. Worth it right now? County Commissioner Wayne West,
Wayne West, and not to be confused with Arvin West,
but I bet you they're related. Now, Wayne West, he
had another condition. He said, look, Willie Nelson comes back
and he has to come back to deal with his charge.
I'm going to insist that he listened to me sing
(23:14):
one of my own songs. He had a sound cloud
link he did, and he made Willie listen to it. Kid,
He played a song for Willie and someone, watch you
sit right there. We're like now just so embarrassed for
him right now. If you feel like clapping along, just
clap along. This is a good Willie Nelson is too
kind hearted to say anything. So he's that kind hearted. Now.
(23:37):
He sat there and he like clapped along or whatever
the guy asked for him, and then he got the
hell out of county. So that was his final pot bust.
And what number were we at Elizabeth? Was that six?
Very good? Very good? So we had Actually that was
his fifth. I'm sorry, I was very good. Maybe I
(23:59):
do smoke just on the on the weekends. Well, now, Whalen,
he wasn't a pot smoker. He's like, you didn't really
like the pot, but he's unlike you because what he
did like was cocaine. Oh yeah, he loved it. Yeah
he did. But that's why, well, you know, Whalon would
write songs like one of my favorite songs, this is
the title, I've always been crazy, but it's kept me
(24:19):
from going insane. Right now, that's a Whalon song. It's
a cocaine song. Now. And his autobiography, Whalon, he writes
rather extensively about how much he loves cocaine. And I
read the autobiography and uh, let's just say there are
some choice quotes like that right now, like, for instance,
detail stories about how he would wake up in the
(24:39):
middle of the night, go and start a line, smoke
a cigarette, and then go back to bed, like he
couldn't make it through a night's sleep without having to go.
And it's not like a little bump a rail. He's
doing two and three inch rail. Oh, god right. He
even said that he loved the taste of cocaine, because
he did. He liked the smell of it and the
taste of it. It It tastes like flour polish. It's terrible.
I'd the snort draino. I mean for the smell. I'm saying,
(25:02):
not for the birth now. Whaland also used to say
that he was a happy druggie. He was the happiest
druggie you ever saw, you know. But he's like, you know,
I'm not one of those down er drug users right now.
In his autobiography, he tells all these stories about how
like he would regularly stay up for six seven days
on cocaine. That ain't easy, right, It's not like speed.
You gotta be doing like every twenty thirty minutes, So
(25:24):
every twenty thirty minutes for six days, seven days in
a row. He's, oh god, yeah, now. Waland also sit
up and he would smoke about five packs of cigarettes today.
Some accountant heard this and didn't believe him. It's like,
I've done the math and it is physically impossible for
you to smoke five packs of cigarettes today. Whalen's like,
not if you're a week exactly come on now, Doc.
(25:47):
So you asked about how much it would be to
be snorting so much cocaine. We didn't really ask, but
you inferred that would be expensive. Wayland said in his
autobiography and a quote at a hundred dollars a graham,
I was buying it twenty dollars a pop. You can't
keep everybody's habit up. And my intake was reaching fift
dollars a day. Wow. You may be wondering, how is
(26:09):
it possible to snort that much cocaine? Whalen and Whalen.
It's like, I got you, here's what you need to do.
So and I quote, I would snort half a graham
on one side of my nose and a half a
graham in the other shotgun in it at the top
of Most people's heads might have come off if they've
done that, I must have had the constitution of ten men.
(26:29):
Oh my god, do you know how much cocaine half
a gram is doing it? One sitting he's like pouring
it in his ear like that could just in taking
a half gram of cocaine could probably put a lot
of people down, like literally just put them when it's
like yeah, nope, Now once again, I've got to say,
to be very responsible, Whalen would not recommend you do cocaine.
(26:53):
He said, don't ever do cocaine. It's a terrible drug.
I agree with him. Cocaine has cost me friends. I
think it's a terrible drug. Do you want to do
a drug? Smoke pot? Be like Willie Nelson might pack.
In fact, I don't even really consider pot a drug.
But we don't need to get into all that. But
Whalon used to say, I don't say any of us
to advocate drugs at all. I think drugs are killers. Ultimately,
they ruin your life, in the lives of the people
who love you. That's an important point to remember. And
(27:15):
also the cocaine he was doing didn't have fetanel in it.
It didn't like, oh, one snort and you drop. So
this is also to keep in mind. Now I want
to tell you story of Whalen out smarting the day
you're ready, I'm ready. This story goes V. Seven. I'm
gonna keep you in the seventies for most of this
that I thought so Whalen's manner during By the way,
(27:38):
Whalen and Willi have the same manager and in the
n seventies seven, Willie figures out that his manager has
not been paying his taxes, and this is what's gonna actually,
I r s tapes. He has to record this in
the eighties to pay for his taxes. He finds his
out and he's like, what the hell And he goes
to tell Whalon man that our manager is junk, right,
and so Whalen say, oh man, I'm already dealing with him.
I got him trying to say he's trying to send
(27:59):
me cocaine down from New York because he says I'm
spending too much on cocaine. So the same manager who's
not paying Willie's taxes is sending cocaine in the mail
to Whalon, right, So the guys just skirting the edge.
Eventually the guy gets busted this manager for the stuff
he does with Willie on the taxes, and then the
manager that there's this other manager, the assistant. He gets
(28:21):
caught up in this whole cocaine deal. I'm about to
tell you, And Willie is so impressed. When the guy
says I'm willing to take the charges for Whalon, he
makes him his manager. So it's just it's all country
logic here. Yeah, that's this is that's why it's called
outlawed country exactly. You know, so you're ready for some
real outlaw countries, please, Okay Whalen's managers. I told you
(28:42):
he's worried about how much Whalen is spending on cocaine
because he's spending thousands of dollars. He's worried about him
getting busted because he's buying cocaine from anybody who has
white powder, right, and he's traveling a lot, so he
doesn't always know where to get it. It It means he
has to go out to black markets and so forth.
He's putting himself at risk. He's like, look, I'll send
you some cocacaine from New York, right, So that's his
answer care package. This man can't send a check to
the I R S, but he can send a package
(29:03):
of he knows where to get cocaine, which I think
actually makes sense. So now Whalen has this right hand
man named Richie Albright. Richie Albright is going to be
all throughout this story. So when I say Richie or
Richie Allbright, that's what I'm talking. And uh, they're waiting
in the studio in Nashville, recording for his album that's
about to come out. He's also doing some tribute work
(29:24):
on a Hank Williams track, and so he's doing backing
vocals on the Hank Williams track whilsto recording his album,
and the cocaine is not arrived yet, and he's like
worried about and he's like telling Richie about it between takes,
and Richie's like, well, you know, yeah, it'll come down,
don't don't worry about it, Austin, and he's like, man,
I just really need that cocaine. And he's like yeah,
I know. So Richie's sitting there with him, he's in
and Whalen's like, man, I mean, I just don't know
(29:47):
when when it's gonna be down here. Richie's like, well,
how long has it been? Whale's like about three days.
Richie's like, well that ain't good Haus because he knows
that cocaine should not take that long to get from
New York to Nashville. They eventually here from the delivery
Sir of us that the package has arrived was like
thank god. They send the secretary out to go get it.
She goes out to the airport picks it up. She
comes back, but she apparently does not see the d
(30:08):
e A agents following her back to the studio. That's
a dumb, dumb move. Yeah, I'm gonna go pick it
up from the airport. No oh, yeah, that stays unclaimed.
If they tell you to pick something up with the
air return to send. So here's how Whalen remembers it.
His secretary returns to the studio with the package of
cocaine and I quote, and does it say in like
(30:30):
spray painted block letters, cocaine on the outside, not cocaine.
So I quote and this will answer your questions, it
said via World Courier Incorporated. I had an inkling of
what it might be. I stuck the package under my arm,
and I walked into the studio area, setting the package
down on the music stand in front of my microphone.
I opened the wrapping. Inside I found a second package.
(30:53):
I cracked that open, and I took a quick peek,
long enough to ensure myself it contained packs of cocaine.
I put it on the music stand in and I
tucked my headphones back over my ears. But instead of
music coming over the headphones, I heard a crowd of people,
there was his voice saying, we followed a package that
came in here. We're from the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency.
What happened to the package the girls just delivered? Now,
(31:13):
Richie Albrights, he's working the sound board at this time.
Then Whalen is in the recording studio, so they're separated
by that clear glass window and they have to use
a microphone to speak to each other. Well, Richie kind
of leans over on the sound board it puts his
hand over the talk back microphone, so that now Whalen
can hear everything, and that's what he's hearing in his headphones.
But the d agents they're not sound people. They don't
know what's going on. They can't see Whalen. Therefore they
(31:34):
assume Whalen can't see them or hear them. Right, he
knows everything that's going down, right, So while the d
agents are hassling on Richie Albright, it's like, there ain't
no package here and we all need to get going.
We're working here right now. Richie Albright uh is really
insistent on this, and the d agents like, no, we
gotta we're down here for the package. And so Richie
Albright says, and I quote, well, okay, you guys got
(31:55):
a search warrant? They said no, but we can get one.
I said, okay, but while you're getting that search warrant,
we're gonna keep working there because it's costing us two
and fifty dollars an hour. I told the agent, y'all
just best be quiet now. So Whalen is like scrambling
what to do with the cocaine, and he knows he's
in there with him right he's but sitting the right
on his music stands. So he's like, can I get
all of it done? He's like, I can do five
(32:16):
pounds in lake seconds. How big a straw am I
gonna need to do all of this cocaine? So Whalen
and I quote he says, I grabbed that package from
the music stand and I threw it away behind me,
and I couldn't make that shot again in a million years.
It's slid under a baseboard by the wall, just as
pretty as you please. Now, Whalens finally ditched the cocaine,
(32:37):
and Richie sees this, so he tells Whalen that they
should get back to recording the song he's trying to
give him covers. He's like, hey, wait, wait, let's just
try it from the top. And so Whalen, without missing
a beat, he starts singing a song right now. Whalen says, quote,
Richie hit play and record and the tape started turning.
I did the harmony. It was a good take and
that was the harmony that we used on the record.
So Whalen's happy with the take. He comes into the
(32:57):
control booth and he's like, hey, Richie, play that one back,
turned up the music. Let me here are that sounds.
And so Richie does this, told hits the music. The
speakers come alive. The four or five D agents have
to listen to Whalen singing all loud in the speakers.
He sits down. Richie Albright leans over next to him
and he starts like pointing out the speakers like they're
talking about the music. He's like, do you know what's
going on? Whalen whispers back, hell, yeah, I know what's happening.
(33:17):
The D agents and now they don't know anything about
what these two are talking aboutcause they're waving their fingers.
They keep talking about they're talking about music. Right now.
He's like, Richie's like looking at him and say, hey, hoss,
I'll take this I'll take this one for you. I'm
taking it. And and Whalen's like what he tells what
he tells riche allbright, you ain't taken now, he assumes
his right hand man. Just be calm and don't let
(33:39):
them sons a bit. You scare you. So the two
of them have a plan. They're gonna manage to get
this cocaine pass these D e A Agents. Now, how
they decided to do that is left to be decided.
So Whalen is sitting there and he's like, okay, obviously
the man of the hour. The d agents. Once the
song ends, they come up and they go, Whalen, uh,
we got these warrants for you. So Whalen and his
autobiography recounts he took out to warrants, one for possession
(34:01):
of cocaine and the other for conspiracy with further intent
to distribute. I took some time to look them over,
and after a while I handed them back. I don't know,
I shrug, But you said possession. I don't see anything
around here, do you, And we know it's here, Whalen,
the agent says, right. Whalen says, well, if it is here,
finding it might be a problem. So now it's a challenge.
(34:21):
And let's see, you boys are real smart with your
your patent leather shoes. So Whalen's like, I gotta get
back to work. We're recording this album. So he and
Albright keep it up with there like Masquerade. Now he's
still trying to decide what to do. He's taking the
cocaine off music stand. He's tossing under the floorboards, but
he knows that's not the best hiding place because the
agents will eventually tear the exactly. So he's sitting there
like trying to decide. I got him stalled for right now,
(34:43):
what can I do? And Richie's like I got a plan.
So Richie Albright it's like, uh hey, hey, Whalen, you
you're going back there, and you know we'll take this
next track. So Whalen does as he's told, goes back
in the recording studio with the cocaine and he starts
getting ready. He sings about six teen bars and the
next track, Richie hits the talk back button. Uh, someoney,
need to change that microphone. Hang going right there, I'm
gonna come and change that microphone. So he gets up
(35:04):
and then he goes in the recording booth. He's like,
where is that? So kind of points out it with
his eyes about where it is, and so then Richie
Albright uh, he picks the story back up. At this point,
he says, so I go out there and moving the microphone,
I found the package. I put it in my pants.
I come back out right and around that same time
Whalen's booking agent arrives. So now the scenes getting more chaotic.
And by the way, the booking agent is half drunk,
(35:26):
so he shows half drunk with all these d agents.
You know what's going on here? What are y'all doing?
We're paying a lot of money and he's getting allowed with.
Whalen starts yelling at the bookie agent, you shut up.
We needed to deal, so the two of them start fighting.
This gives the distraction that Ritchie needs to go and
run off to the bathroom, so he then slips the
way to the bathroom, takes a cocaine out of his pants,
dumps it in the toilet flush. The d agents all
(35:48):
turned their head when they hear that flush. They know
exactly what it means, and as Whalen would later bragg
in his autobiography, they never did find anything, but since
the DA they still decided to arrest Whalen. Yeah, they
busted him, with or without the cocaine. He has to
go and get arrested and do the purp walk. And
then eventually the FEDS the case falls apart because the
bad arrest warrants because they didn't have it for the studio,
(36:10):
they had it for his office. There's a whole problem,
and then the prosecutors have to let it go. Whalon
takes that as an inspiration to write a new hit
song called don't you think this outlaw? Bits done gone
out of hand? A little fit? Yeah right. So eventually
in the eighties, Whylan decides to quit doing cocaine because
of these various issues in just like the cocaine keeps
bringing in. Now, after this quick little break and you
(36:33):
guys can enjoy some morsels of advertisements, I'll get back
to you with a very promised story of the cocaine bear.
(36:59):
So I told you Elizabeth Whalen had been able to
sneak the cocaine pass to the agents thanks to Richie,
all right, and he manages not to go to jail.
So he also, as I told you right before the break,
decides to quit doing cocaine. Good for him, right, great choice.
So when he quits, he decides to do it the
country way, which means cold turkey, no help, no no
(37:19):
going to rehab, no talking to anybody. He just locks
himself away and says, I'm just gonna sweat it out right.
But first he's got to get rid of all the temptations.
So he goes around his house and he gathers up
all his little secret stashes because he's been tucking away
cocaine for years. He never wants to run out of cocaine.
It's everywhere, it is everywhere. So he gathers up all
of his cocaine and then he hands it to his wife,
(37:40):
Jesse Coulter. Now, how much cocaine do you think he
gathered up and from his house and all these little
bits and pieces over here in the sixty pounds. Not quite.
It wasn't a small child of cocaine. It was just
a nice, reasonable half pound of cocaine half pound away.
As he's like, I need some just in case I'm
going to run out, like Columbia is gonna stop making cocaine. Yeah,
(38:00):
So Jesse takes all this coke to the bathroom and
he hands are this half pound of cocaine and she's
singing the praises of Jesus the whole time. Right, So
she's in there, she's got a half pound of cocaine.
She's dumping in the toilet, flushing and going, oh, praise Jesus,
Thank you, Jesus, Sweet Jesus, Jesus is great, Jesus is love.
And then meanwhile all the like fish in the watershed,
(38:21):
totally different, thank you. So, as I told you, we're
going to get into the story of the Cocaine Bear. Now,
Wayland Jennings, as I told you, is a big lover
of cocaine and then eventually quit. Yes, he still had
like a hankering for like that rough knock about cocaine
lifestyle he used to enjoy. So even after he quit
(38:41):
doing cocaine, he was still have certain cocaine collectibles. One
of those cocaine collectibles was the Cocaine Bear. It has
just like a cocaine hippo kind of it has something
to do with Pablo Escobar. Right. There was this seventy
eight words story published in The New York Times sev
seventy eight words. It's a very short story micro fiction.
(39:03):
Yeah like that. You don't see that newspapers really much anymore. Right.
The headline was cocaine and a dead bear. Oh well,
it's not that bad bears die, but yeah, that was
the headline. It was real New York Times eighties dead bear.
You're like, oh, so did someone shoot him? Want a subway?
What happened? So the Times paints the scene and I
quote a hundred and seventy five pound black bear apparently
(39:25):
died of an overdose of cocaine after discovering a batch
of the drug. This bear was found in the North
Georgia Woods. Now, the bear had not purchased this cocaine.
The bear wasn't like a cocaine But the bear wasn't
hanging out with Whalen Jennings. Nothing about the whale and
all was involved in this part of But the bear
did do a lot of coke. Right now, the bear
had discovered a duffel bag full of cocaine just sitting
(39:48):
in the woods, and being a bear, he ate the
cocaine and that was it for Mr Curious Bear. So
seventy five pounds of cocaine were in one duffel bag
and there was multiple right, yes, right, he's like mustache.
He was traped the woods and his day bag. So
(40:10):
it was about four and fifty million dollars worth of cocaine. Goodness, yeah,
it's a good amount of cocaine. There was these cocaine
smuggers you've been flying it up from Columbia and they
plan to deliver the cocaine into the southeast United States.
And things went awry and the smuggler had to leap
from his little tiny cess in the plane. But decide,
do you know what, I'm taking the cocaine with me.
So he like straps the cocaine to him in the
duffel bag, gets his parachute, throws a couple of bags out,
(40:32):
and then dives out of the plane. Yeah, doesn't work
well for him. So the cocaine lands in the Appalachian Woods.
The smuggler lands in a driveway in a suburb one
state away. Since survived the fall, that story bind you
will soon be a new movie called Cocaine Bear. I
swear to God it's coming one and it should be
I believe ray Leota's last film. And I bet you
(40:55):
he went to the Oscar for it. Because it's a
cocaine movie ray Leota, ray Leota as as cocaine. He
starts as cocaine. No, he's the bear. He's going to
be like in a little bear costume. I like that. Yeah,
it's like a bright eyeliner. That's how you know it's
Leota exactly. So this news story, I told you it's
(41:17):
about a bear. It's it's about Wayale and Jennings. How
did they come together? I am afraid to know. And
if it wasn't the cocaine, what was it? Taxidermy your
other favorite? Yeah, so someone gets this bear. They taxidermy
the bear. They renamed the bear Pablo Escobar. Is that
like something from Bilder Bear? So this new the newest
(41:39):
latest from Bilderbart. Pablo Escobar goes on display at a
rest stop in Georgia. Oh god, so yeah, Pablo Escobar.
He's at the visitor center of the Chattahoochee River National
Recreation Area. Did they have him in like board shorts
and sunglasses, like doing like a cool guy post films
up like he's hanging up all the all of the
(42:00):
taxidermy cool guy. It's the cool guy club. Was he
stuffed with cocaine? That would have been a good use
of the cocaine. But if he is, yeah, no that
he was not, because Whalen tried. That's why he bought
the bear. No, it's like I thought, quit. No, I
promise you he did. In the nineties, there's a fire
at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Then the whole building,
(42:21):
the visitor center burns. They have to clear out all
the Indian artifacts. They have to clear out all those
various local like the like, but exactly, thank you, all right,
and then of course i'll see Pablo Esco bear. So
they take this and they put all in store junites, right,
and then a month later after they rebuilt, the recreation
center burn. No, no, it was all saved, right, just
(42:44):
the recreation center itself, but most of the stuff that
was again glass cases and stuff, seemed to manage it
through the fire. It's mostly a structure fire, right, So
it's all in these storage units. Takes a month to
rebuild it. They go down to the storage units to
go and grab the stuff to take it back. There's
nothing in the storage units, Dunton, all gone right, just empty,
not even a note like I took out any of
(43:04):
the cocaine. Nothing, right, so Pablo Escobart gone. So he
was just gonna suck on the fur the bear in there.
I know there's something there. The bear he ate seventy
five pounds. He actually didn't eat that much. But anyway,
Whalen Jennings ends up with this bear. Right now you're
wondering how the hell could Whalon Jennings end up with
the bear. He he's not gonna be hanging out. People
(43:26):
are breaking into storage. Maybe he isn't these truck stops.
Who knows right turns out? Well, let back up. I
need you to know some about Whalen Jennings. The dude
love to collect stuff like it wasn't like he just
had the Publo Escobert. He also had a robe the
Muhammad Ali had warm and he beat up Leon Spinks
like in the eighties fight. He had one. He hit
(43:46):
two of Willie Nelson's braids that he had been given
his braid yea like when Willie cut his braid to
gave him to Whalon, and Whalen's like, thank you, Willy,
and he proudly displayed them in his home. He had
a motorcycle that once belonged to Buddy Holly, who he
was a guitar player for but exactly, and uh, he
had a pair of dukes of Hazzard General lead Dodge
chargers because you know he was the narrator for that
great job on that And he had cocaine Bear. So
(44:09):
this is all in his collection. He's a collector. Yeah exactly.
The police who are supposed to solve this mystery, they
eventually tracked down the stolen artifacts and they show up
at a pawn shop in Nashville and the shop owners like, okay,
you got me man. They're like, well, wait where is
all this stuff? Like I sold it, man, stuff is
all gone? Wait what what? Okay? Where are the Native
American artifacts? He's like, ah, beats me, Like, well, do
(44:30):
you have receipts? I probably can find him. He's like okay,
well where we really would like to find Pablo Escobart.
And he's like, okay, I have that one. I do
know where. They care more about that than the artifacts.
Oh yeah, that's the one that when the press wants
to know about And where is Hazel's butter churn? Exactly? No,
I just need the bear. The cocaine bear will be
good bear. So guy's like okay, well I happen to
(44:50):
know where that is, and so he writes down Whalen
Jennings address slips into the cops, where cops go and
they drive across Nashville. The show of at Whalen's plays.
Whalen sitting outside and he's hey, officers, just give them
a big old howdy, and they're like, hey, ware, and
they started walking to him. They're like, no, Whitland, we
came out here because we heard you might have some
property that could have been stolen from down to George Away.
And he's like, what are you talking about? What do
(45:11):
you what do you got there? And he's like, we're
looking for a cocaine bear and oh yeah, Pablo Escobart,
Like you have. I can't take that. He's called Pablo
Escobar best. So the police are like, yeah, man, Whalen, look,
we don't want to have any problems. We're not gonna
tell the press about it. If you can just give
us the cocaine bear, we'll go take it back down
to Georgia. All problems solved. It's like, you know, officers,
(45:32):
I'd love to, but I'd no longer have Pablo Escobart.
They're like, what do you mean you don't have Pablo Escobar.
He's like, look, man, I don't have it. They're like, okay,
well did you sell it? And he's like, no, no one, baby,
I may have traded it. And he's like, what do
you mean traded it? I gave it to a Las
Vegas coake dealer. Like what. Yeah. So when they hear that,
these Nashville cops, local cops are like, man, ain't no way.
(45:53):
No one's gonna send us to Las Vegas to go
get a stuffed taxidermy bear. So that's where the tale
of the Missing Cocaine Bear ends. Nobody knows. Only Whaland
knows where the cocaine Bear went. That is, whoever actually
has it. Because this no, they didn't well they didn't.
They took his word and so they believed in what
he said. Yeah, it's over. Cocaine Bear became sentient and
(46:14):
was hiding in the basement. He may have never actually
been dead. He was just like real stiff from all
the cocaine. He wasn't actually taxed, gritting the whole tim well.
That is the mystery of the Cocaine Bear. Except for
one other thing. No charges were filed against Whaland. They
let him go good. That was his last big legal Yeah,
(46:35):
so there you go. So my favorite drug bust from
Outlaw Country? I love it. I love it. So, Elizabeth,
what's a ridiculous takeaway here? So my takeaway would be
that Outlaw Country is the coolest of all genres. Heart agree,
love it? Um, And I would say that if you
have a cocaine bear in your house, I would I
(46:56):
would keep that under your hat. I wouldn't let people know.
I might even give the bear I had to wear,
seeing act like cocaine bear wouldn't be wearing a hat
like that. It exactly Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway? Look
at me? I'm all a flood as I care. You
see me, you hear me. I want to know about
(47:17):
your journey. Let me have it. Well, my journey is this,
don't do cocaine. It's a terrible drug. Do not do cocaine.
There's nothing good. So other than that, I think Willie
Nelson has put it best in his song nothing I
can do about it now. And if you will allow me,
I'm gonna give you just a couple of lyrics from
this song because this is like, um, I don't want
(47:39):
to say a model of my life, but it's an
operating standard. You're ready. I've got a long list of
real good reasons for all the things I've done. I've
got a picture in the back of my mind of
what I've lost and what I've won. I've survived every situation.
No one win, to freeze and wind, to run and regret.
It's just a memory written on my brow and there's
nothing I can do about it now. Amen, Well, thanks
(48:02):
for joining us. I am Elizabeth Dutton and I am
Willie Nelson. Hey have about it. It's her Willie Nelson.
You can find us online a Ridiculous Crime on both
Twitter and Instagram. You gotta tip for us about a
ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about it? Hit us up.
You wanna confess to Ridiculous Crime, Let us no Email
(48:22):
us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. We'll catch
you next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Snoop Dogg's personal
joint roller Dave Cousting, researches by cannabis cultivation connoisseur and
small batch curator Marissa Brown. The theme song is by
Coach of the California Crowns Thomas Lee and our resident
(48:45):
midnight Rider Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Jimmy Carter,
was Right, Bolan and Noel Honey Suckle, Rose Brown. Say
It one more time, we Dequias Crow. Ridiculous Crime is
a production of I Heart Radio four more podcasts. For
(49:07):
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
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Elizabeth Dutton
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